Joe St. John is the Vice President of Business Development at Stone Eagle F&I, and works with over 6000 dealerships to provide even greater profitability.
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What Ted Ings and Joe St. John discuss in this episode:
- Joe explains what online transparency actually means. Transparency is a buzz-word that gets tossed around a lot in the industry
- It's important to standardize the F&I data coming from the DMS so that we can understand what's actually happening in the world at the transactional level of vehicle purchase. Doing so empowers dealers to understand that it matched the narrative throughout the industry and what information can be validated or invalidated.
- In 2018 NADA shared that less than 5% of dealers have a payment calculator on their website in any way, shape, or form. Today, more than 91% of dealers have payment information on their sites.
- What kicked the fear for dealers? COVID created an urgency to move the buying process online and make it more transparent upfront.
- When customers have control of the process, they seem to make some really good decisions and land themselves on cars that fit within their budget. They don't push themselves to the limit of their budget. Their ability to have room in that budget to place them where they need to be.
- We have to apply the same idea and concept to the fixed ops world. With more upfront transparency and allowing customers more control over the process, they will make smart decisions, despite what we've historically believed in the industry.
- Transparency is not the eroder of profitability, it should equal profitability.
- Listen to the full episode for even more insights from Joe St. John.
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